In this photo released by Sony Pictures, actresses, from left, Ziyi Zhang, Michelle Yeoh and Gong LI appear a scene from the new film, "Memoirs of a Geisha." The filmmakers find themselves defending their decision to look beyond Japan, where the film takes place, when they searched for their leading ladies. Zhang and Gong are Chinese, and Yeoh is Malaysian-Chinese. (AP Photo/Sony Pictures, David James)

Photo: DAVID JAMES

In this photo released by Sony Pictures, actresses, from left, Ziyi...

"Memoirs of a Geisha," based on Arthur Golden's novel, is very much a holiday movie as the term has come to be defined. It oozes importance, is heavy with worthiness and lies there, waiting to be appreciated for the beautiful thing it is. Intelligent people will recognize the care and attention that went into its creation and might come away feeling as if they've been in the presence of art. But they won't feel as if they had a direct experience of art, because the film is too labored and the story too overstuffed and cliched to incite passion in an audience.

The exoticism of the location, the singularity of its world, the intricacy of its customs -- director Rob Marshall ("Chicago") focuses on these elements, applies his expert eye, brings them to life and then banks on them too much. The subject here is life as a geisha, but the story concentrates on the saga of a specific geisha, and it's a simple story that can't sustain interest in the face of epic treatment and a running time that's about a half-hour too long. The movie needed a lighter hand and less portentous narration. It needed a director and a producing team less intent on making a masterpiece and more intent on just making a good movie.

This is not to say that individual elements aren't impeccable. Search long and hard and you won't find a more respectable failure. But the movie falls down in the two most important areas: It doesn't make the saga of its heroine compelling, emblematic or significant. And it makes being a geisha look no more interesting than working at Hooters. Indeed, imagine a film about a girl getting a job at Hooters, learning how to carry a tray and parry the customers' witty comments. Now imagine it set in a romantic past, in a far-off culture, and the various rivalries among the waitresses for who gets to wear the tightest T-shirt. The result wouldn't be all that different from "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Like a lot of movies (and people) that go bad, the film is best at the beginning. A child of poverty, young Chiyo (Suzuka Ohgo) is sold to a geisha house, and her early life is as tortured as Cinderella's. She's relegated to housecleaning and told she will never become a geisha. Hatsumomo (Gong Li), one of the star geishas, takes an instant disliking toward her and abuses and undermines her at every opportunity. Chiyo experiences only one fleeting moment of kindness, when a handsome stranger, known as the Chairman (Ken Watanabe), sees her on the street and buys the little girl a flavored ice. If Hatsumomo is the equivalent of a wicked stepsister, the Chairman is the handsome prince, and Chiyo resolves to grow up to become a geisha and have the Chairman as her danna (patron/sugar daddy).

These early scenes present a gripping situation and vivid characters. As the evil geisha, Gong Li is fascinating, in that her treatment of Chiyo seems compulsive, deriving from a weird mix of fear and self-loathing. Young Chiyo is a prisoner, and her plight is brought home with particular force by the casting of Ohgo, an 11-year-old actress gifted with an adult's intensity and emotional readiness. She's also lovely, and the shot in which she finally smiles -- during her chance encounter with the kind Chairman -- is the most memorable in the film.

But then she grows up. Chiyo is renamed Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang) and comes under the tutelage of a benevolent older geisha, played by Michelle Yeoh, and the rest of the movie traces Sayuri's emergence as a geisha, her tribulations and her never-ending longing for the Chairman. The movie becomes bloated, giving us a crash course in geisha artistry and customs, as well as a tour through the history of Japan in the 1930s and 194os as seen through a geisha's eyes. But the personal dimension of the film loses all impact.

For all the movie's focus on Sayuri's professional striving, it doesn't make much of a case for why geisha-hood is worth achieving. At best, it looks like a lonely, degraded existence, so who cares if she succeeds or not? Even worse, Sayuri's unrequited passion for the Chairman begins to seem like a story construct. It's just something to hold the audience's attention while the movie concentrates on other things -- such as peasant life and customs during World War II.